Maud Martha's favourite flower was a dandelion.
Comfortable, plain; always around when you need it.
Maud Martha never realized that the dandelion was a weed.
And why should she have?
Real butter used to be that yellow. Real wool, the kind you had to hand wash and hang to dry, was that soft.
Her flower was a reminder of the way things used to be.
Not the ways things are now; the way she's a weed at the movies in town, the way she's a weed on her own street, a weed in her husbands eyes.
The dandelion was simply a simple flower fit for simple Maud Martha in the simplest of ways.
But why bother comparing an ugly black woman to a beautiful yellow weed?
"Why talk of beautiful mountains and grains of alley sand in the same breath?"